'Twas a Famous Victory

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 893, 14 September 1956, Page 25

'Twas a Famous Victory

ALTHOUGH toiling in my garden, dismayed by its rankness and evident preferences for all the stolider and more luxuriant weeds, I did not miss a word of the fourth Test. Sets blared all round me, and Winston McCarthy was as clear and impassioned at the compost heap as he was at the seed bed, whose winter ravages I endeavoured to repair. Next door, the neighbours sat in silent absorption, only occasionally picking up a clod of packed earth and crumbling it nervously in their tense hands. For vast issues were at stake; national honour, and a record of Springbok victories in test rubbers unbroken since 1896. I need hardly tell you that record was shattered. Winston McCarthy addressed, I suspect, the whole nation, in a respectful silence which politicians and religious leaders can call on only in times of acute crisis. I have written before of that keen-eyed eloquent man. Let me do so again, in a tribute to his massive skill which has _ unfalteringly made vivid for us more than a score of games; of his evident concern for the game itself, for his splendid and exceptional impartiality, He has,

in every game, nobly upheld its best ideals. The massed demonstration at the end of the fourth Test was most moving: sentimental fool that I am, fully aware of the seductions and dangers of mass emotion, I became part of it, and almost sang Now is the Hour myself in my quavering baritone, Farewell, then, Springboks! Till 1960!